October 17 – Narcisa Hirsch: Contact Zones
Curator Federico Windhausen in person and Narcisa Hirsch via Skype A pivotal figure in Latin American experimental cinema, Narcisa Hirsch is renowned for her striking explorations of the body, agency, and desire. Emigrating from Germany to Argentina in the 1920s, Hirsch first took up artistic practice through painting, then shifted to performances and happenings before […]
October 10 – Zach Blas: Obedient x3
Zach Blas in person Wry and provocative, the work of multidisciplinary artist Zach Blas (Post-Bac 2006) examines technologies of social control through the lens of queer and feminist politics. In recent years, his projects have addressed biometric capture, microdosing, the hegemony of the Internet, and sex toys. Blas presents a suite of these projects, including the Chicago premiere of Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 (2018). Using Derek Jarman’s […]
On VALIE EXPORT
We wrap up the Spring 2017 season this week with the work of Austrian performance and multi-media artist, VALIE EXPORT. Born Waltraud Lehner, the artist rejected her family and ex-husband’s name in 1967, adopting the nom de guerre, VALIE EXPORT, from a popular brand of cigarettes. VALIE EXPORT’s work spans the realms of video, performance, cinema, installation, and interaction, expanding […]
April 20 – VALIE EXPORT
Due to unforeseen circumstances, VALIE EXPORT will not be able to join us as previously announced. Curator and Professor Bruce Jenkins will introduce the screening with an in-depth overview of the artist’s career. Among the most important artists of her generation, VALIE EXPORT has created a provocative and groundbreaking body of work that spans film, […]
On Deborah Stratman
This week I am excited to welcome undergraduate Connor Crable to write for us! Crable sharply discusses Deborah Stratman’s newest film, The Illinois Parables, which deals with a series of histories that have been buried over time. In just short of an hour, Deborah Stratman’s newest film, The Illinois Parables, ushers viewers through a series of […]
April 14-Deborah Stratman: The Illinois Parables
Thursday, April 14 | Join us for Chicago-based artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman for a screening and discussion! For the last 25 years, has explored the landscape of our national history and psyche in riveting films, sculpture, sound, and public works. With the Illinois Parables, she turns her attention to the “American microcosm” and its storied past. […]
March 17-shawné michaelain holloway: Extreme Submission
Thursday, March 17 | Join us to welcome dirty new media performance artist shawné michaelain holloway for a screening and discussion! In the last four years, Paris-based dirty new media performance artist shawné michaelain holloway has established herself as one of the most significant voices online. Her rhizomatic projects explore intimacy, power dynamics, and the technologies that […]
On Martine Syms
This week I am delighted to write about Los Angeles-based ‘conceptual entrepreneur’ Martine Syms! Syms explores identity and the ways it is constructed, particularly blackness and black identity–through popular and everyday culture. Martine Syms’s highly interdisciplinary and prolific practice explores the requirements and motives of individual and collective identities in contemporary Western society. Her work often interprets […]
November 12-Martine Syms: The Unreliable Narrator
Thursday, November 12 | This week Los Angeles based ‘conceptual entrepreneur’ Martine Syms will join us for a screening and discussion! The interdisciplinary work of Los Angeles–based “conceptual entrepreneur” Martine Syms (BFA 2007) takes shape through websites, essays, bibliographies, and videos to explore the ways individual and social identities are formed. Incisive and sharp, she has addressed Afrofuturism, […]
On Ming Wong
This week we are excerpting Travis Jeppesen‘s Art in America interview with Ming Wong! To read the full interview see the “MORE” link at the end. TRAVIS JEPPESEN: Petra von Kant, Gustav von Aschenbach, Jake Gittes, Evelyn Mulwray: These cinematic heroes and heroines have little in common except for having all been re-depicted by the Singaporean artist Ming Wong, who […]
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Conversations at the Edge is a weekly series of screenings, performances, and talks by groundbreaking media artists.
CATE is organized by SAIC's Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation in collaboration with the Gene Siskel Film Center and SAIC's Video Data Bank.
Programs take place at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N. State / Chicago, IL / 312.846.2600), unless otherwise noted.
